Identity politics: pros and cons

I am not a fan of identity politics in its current form, but I do acknowledge the obvious fact that ethnic, gender and sexual identity have a basis in reality.

There are a myriad of ways in which society works to help some and harm others based on these identities, and identity politics can be a useful way of understanding this.

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Despite what conservatives and libertarians would have you believe, America is not a meritocracy, and never has been. To pretend that African Americans, women and LGBTQ people for example, haven’t had a hard time historically is to deny reality. There are obvious prejudices embedded in an ethnically white/European dominated, mostly male run society. Learning about this should not be controversial.

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That being said, identity politics has been taken to such an extreme in America that it is creating new hierarchies, distorting reality, and denying inconvenient complexities. The term “white” is now so overused in identity politics circles that it basically has no meaning. Jews are “white” but are perhaps the most historically oppressed minority on earth. In identity politics circles though, Jews apparently don’t count as a minority because of their skin color.

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Even the Anti Defamation League, itself a Jewish organization, changed the definition of racism so that it couldn’t include anti-semitism. The definition of racism, according to the ADL, was specifically the “marginalization and/or oppression of people of color based on a socially constructed racial hierarchy that privileges white people”.

The ADL then changed it back after Whoopi Goldberg announced that the Holocaust was not about race, but rather “white people doing it to white people”.

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The ADL then changed it back after Whoopi Goldberg announced that the Holocaust was not about race, but rather “white people doing it to white people”.

According to the strictures of Wokeness, only white people can now be racist — an illogical fallacy that is inherently racist and infantilizing. Take for example, the fact that hate crimes against Asians are disproportionately committed by African Americans.

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While black people are the disproportionately the victims of hate crimes in America, unsurprisingly, they can be racist too. Identity politics extremists have tied themselves into knots trying to explain why minority on minority violence is actually about White Supremacy (apparently all non-white people exist in a utopian state of non-prejudice until they meet white people and then internalize their racism).

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As a person of Jewish extraction, I can attest to experiencing significantly more anti-semitism (racism) from other minorities than I have from European whites. I’ve also seen terrible racism in Jewish communities against other minorities. I just don’t buy into the idea that white, European people are inherently more racist than anyone else.

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There is of course an asymmetrical power relationship between ethnic groups in America; white people of predominantly European ancestry have historically had far more power and wealth, so their racism is inherently more dangerous. But if history teaches us anything, it is that humans of all ethnic backgrounds can be truly vile to one another given the right circumstances. To say otherwise would be, well, racist.

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Again, identity politics can be a useful tool in helping us understand history and current society. But it is becoming an ideological hammer used by militants to bludgeon debate and hamstring the broader fight against rising fascism in America.
Electoral disaster

If the Left does not engage with criticism of radical identity politics, the Democratic Party faces a very, very serious problem for the foreseeable future.

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